Suffering from Steam regret? Well, now you can make money back on all those games that you really just never end up playing.
Valve has introduces a new refund policy which will allow Steam users to return games and DLC within two weeks of their original purchase. The product has to have been relatively unused, with under two hours of total gameplay time logged. Expendable items also cannot have been utilized or transferred before requesting a return. If you meet these requirements, though, you stand a chance of getting your money back.
All refunds can be requested through the official Steam refund website. When approved, they will be issued within one week of approval. You don’t particularly need to qualify your reason for returning your game or DLC. You can do so even if you simply didn’t like it. You can also legitimately return a game if it goes on sale just after purchase. You can even return a pre-purchased game, if you later decide you really don’t want it as badly.
Steam will attempt to offer refunds in the same way that they were paid. So credit will be refunded to credit cards, debits will be made back to the bank account, so on so forth. If there is an issue refunding your original payment method, you will instead get money added to your Steam wallet.
There are a few extra restrictions worth noting. In-game items and microtransactions will be reviewed on a case by case basis. Bonus content and gifts cannot be refunded once redeemed. Content that has been modded is ineligible for a refund. Movies cannot be refunded at all. In addition, if you have been banned from a game for cheating, you are ineligible to request a refund on it.
“Refunds are designed to remove the risk from purchasing titles on Steam – not as a way to get free games,” says Valve. “If it appears to us that you are abusing refunds, we may stop offering them to you. We do not consider it abuse to request a refund on a title that was purchased just before a sale and then immediately rebuying that title for the sale price.”
What do you think? Will you be returning some Steam games any time soon? Let us know in the comments.